Meta (Facebook) advertising for beginners

How to create Meta (Facebook) ads step by step

Facebook is the world’s most extensive social network, presenting an excellent opportunity for marketers to reach a relevant audience through targeted ads.

The platform has somewhere in the range of 2.7 billion active monthly users, so it is fair to say that you can find most audiences on Facebook.

However, with such a large audience base, it is necessary to set up your ads, targeting, and optimization correctly to get the most out of Facebook ads.

Our expert team will share some tips to help you get set up and give you the information needed to run successful ad campaigns.

Simple steps to Facebook ad success

Facebook makes the process relatively straightforward; however, it is important to carefully consider each step to maximize your chance of a successful ad campaign.

Select the ad type. There are many different formats available for the Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network; these include image type ads, video ads, collection, and Instant Experience ads.

Select the ad objective. It is essential to select the appropriate ad objective for your campaign, you can choose from 11 campaign objectives, and you should pick the most relevant one for your campaign. It is not possible to switch the campaign objective after, and the benefit of choosing the most appropriate objective is that Facebook’s systems automatically optimize according to your objective, trying to generate the most results within your ad budget.

Set a budget: here, you can select the budget using a series of options, including setting the budget at the campaign level or ad set level and allocating a daily or lifetime budget.

Select the audience. Here it is often a good idea to build from your customer base, as most brands find that it’s possible to get better results by targeting audiences already familiar with their products or services. This can be done through ‘Custom Audiences”, and you can choose from audiences such as previous and current customers (customer list), website visitors (as long as you have the Facebook pixel properly set up and have enough data), and Facebook page followers. 

You can refine your audience further through ‘Detailed Targeting’ by selecting interests and behaviors.

It is usually best to avoid making any demographics or age-based assumptions, particularly if you are starting a new advertising campaign. The largest age groups on Facebook are 18-24-year-olds and 25-34-year-olds, but this doesn’t mean you have to limit to younger generations, especially if you’re working from an assumption. You may field better results by targeting all age groups and analyzing the data based on your desired campaign results, enabling you to make data-driven decisions.

In terms of placement, it is usually best to allow Facebook to automatically place your ads through their platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the broader Audience Network. It is possible to pick your preferred placement, but leaving this automated allows Facebook’s systems to choose which platforms to place the ad to deliver optimal results.

Now it’s time to design your ad. There are numerous ad formats to choose from, and it’s good practice to test out various ad formats to see what works best for your target audience.

There are two options to set up an ad: create a fresh one or select an existing post that has already been published on your Facebook page.

At this stage, you can also choose if you would like to use a single image or single video for your ad, or run multiple images (these are termed as “Carousel” or multi-product ads). It is often a good idea for beginners to start with a single image ad and analyze the results, as they are the simplest to set up.

Now you are ready to publish your ad, which you can do by clicking ‘Publish’ and making the payment. 

You can track your campaigns through the Facebook Ads Manager dashboard, which enables you to control your ads, adjust if an ad is not performing well, and scale up ads that deliver the best results.

It is a good idea to set up the Meta (Facebook) pixel to optimize your campaigns. To make your Ad reach a more refined audience, this will allow Facebook to collect data from your website, enabling you to use this data when selecting the audience for your ads.

To start, go to Business Settings in your Business Manager.

• Select your business.
• Click ‘Data Sources’.
• Select ‘Pixels’.
• Click the + Add button.
• Type in a name for your Pixel.
• Optional: Enter your website URL.
• Click ‘Continue’.
• To complete installing the pixel on your website, click ‘Set up the pixel now’.

Conclusion

When you are just getting started, it is good practice to begin with a few ads as a test, using test audiences and small budgets.

Once you have some data in, you will be able to analyze your best, and worst performing ads and discover what works best for your target audience.

So these are some of the basic steps for running Facebook ads; the process to start a campaign is straightforward; however, as with Google Ads, it’s the detail and optimization steps that will yield the best results.

If you have any questions related to Facebook ads, please feel free to contact our expert team at info@relevantaudience.com for more information